These four characters aren’t submitting job applications, though they may be used in future stories. Instead, they’re going to listen to my obituaries. I talk all the time about how in 2010 when I binge-played Dungeons & Dragons with Heather and TJ, four different player characters died under my watch. Every time one of these deaths happened, tears formed in my players’ eyes and RPG life wasn’t the same without them. Their spiritual essences would haunt the PC’s dreams and bring back traumatic memories as they entered their next battlefield thinking the next one could be one of them. As they say at the beginning of every episode from the Law & Order franchise, “These are their stories.”
NAME: Chris Bryan
LEVEL: 3
CLASS: Fighter
RACE: Human
Chris and his cousin Wade made a pact to be lifelong vegans after running away from their farm home due to the bloody treatment of innocent animals. To sustain themselves, they both signed up for the Middlesex National Guard. Both cousins graduated, but at different times in their careers. Wade went on to be a personal bodyguard for the lead PC Darthania Gaveston (controlled by Heather) while Chris joined much later. The cousins and their new PC friends were inseparable. And then one night, their world turned black (not that it already wasn’t in a crime-infested place like Middlesex). Middlesex Fighting Championship, the main MMA enterprise of the D&D campaign, was blocking traffic because ticket sales to their most recent event were skyrocketing. In a fit of road rage, one of the MMA stars, Glenn Allen, tried to run over several innocent people while honking at them. It took Chris, Wade, and an elf paladin named Windham Farrell to subdue Mr. Allen. Unfortunately, Chris was the recipient of several unanswered kicks to the ribs and died of suffocation. Wade was so devastated by his cousin and best friend’s death that he thought about quitting the bodyguard business until his mentor, Zell Jardine, convinced him to do a commercial promoting National Guard membership on the basis that they rescue animals from their abusers. Wade did as he was told, but described it as the most sobering experience in his life. Poor guy.
NAME: Gerard Killings
LEVEL: 3
CLASS: Fighter
RACE: Human
NAME: Kurt Blades
LEVEL: 3
CLASS: Fighter
RACE: Panther
Zell Jardine, the founder of the leftwing terrorist organization The Trench Coat Militia, trained a lot of people in his lifetime into becoming badass soldiers with his ruthless drill instructor mentality. But of all those people, he only had four he considered his best pupils. Gerard and Kurt were among those four people, the other two being a human fighter named Ethan Stryker and a troll fighter named Michael Heaven. Together, the Trench Coat Militia changed the city of Middlesex from a dictatorship to a democracy, but not without shedding a shit ton of blood along the way with their machetes. But when you bring about change with violence, you can expect more violence as you can guess from the deaths of Gerard Killings and Kurt Blades. Both warriors died defending different MMA events from terror organizations and criminal gangs. The difference between the two deaths is that Gerard had a 19-year-old son named Jason who signed up after his father died. Kurt Blades had no family and died in obscurity. Kurt even visited one of the PC’s, a half-orc barbarian named Agrusk Xis (controlled by TJ), in his dreams and asked a profound question, “Why, sweet God, why?!” Agrusk couldn’t come up with an answer even if he was awake and alert.
NAME: India Malakar
LEVEL: 2
CLASS: Monk
RACE: Elf
Considering the fact that India was an elf with a negative constitution modifier and a warrior class, his death shouldn’t have come as a surprise. What was really surprising was how this guy became the longest reigning MFC Welterweight Champion of all time before losing the gold to Agrusk Xis? A negative constitution modifier is detrimental to the work of a mixed-martial artist since most of what they do centers around their conditioning. In gaming terms, India was a level two character with only 7 hit points. This made absolutely perfect sense at the time I played with him, but it doesn’t make sense anymore. Before turning to MMA as a source of income, Brutus Warcry (a human barbarian that I controlled) along with his wife Darthania (Heather’s half-elf wizard) and best friend Agrusk Xis (TJ’s half-orc barbarian) needed help capturing wanted criminals around Middlesex and turning them in to the authorities for bounty money. These criminals could blow the shit out of populations with nail bombs or they could just slash everyone they see to pieces. They were too dangerous for one person to take on alone. India gladly lent his help and surprisingly did a good job of it. But when bounty hunting became too much of a dangerous chore, India was the one person who recommended Brutus, Agrusk, and Darthania become involved with mixed-martial arts, which is much safer and much more regulated by comparison. Brutus became the MFC’s Heavyweight Champion, Agrusk as I’ve said before became the Welterweight Champion, and Darthania became the Vice President of the company. They did well for themselves, unlike India who while helping his new friends fight off terrorists died after having his throat slit by a rat warrior. India’s death was the first to take place among the official PC’s, so everybody in the game took it hard. Even Agrusk, a macho half-orc, was blubbering as he tended to India’s dying corpse.
Four dead player characters from a Dungeons & Dragons campaign in 2010. But death is only the beginning. The greatest thing about being a fictional character from another canon is that there are always extra chances. Instead of rotting in the Middlesex Cemetery, these four are in the unemployment line of my imagination. But don’t worry, they’ll find work soon enough. They always do.
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